At a glance
Crusaders 24 (Sevu Reece, Will Jordan tries; Richie Mo’unga con, 3 pen, drop goal) Chiefs 13 (Damian McKenzie try; 2 pen, con). HT: 15-10.
The key to these ones is usually where the player lands, which, of course, is a bit of a lottery for the person making the tackle.
World Rugby’s guidelines for challenging players in the air state:
If a player is not in a realistic position to gather the ball, there is contact and their opponent lands on their back or side – Yellow card
If a player is not in a realistic position to gather the ball, there is
reckless or deliberate foul play and the player lands in a dangerous position – Red card
Taylor’s actions may well have been in the ‘reckless or deliberate’ department, but fortunately for him, McKenzie landed on his arm, then side.
Had he landed on his head, Taylor would have seen red.
58th minute – Sevu Reece yellow card
The Crusaders wing was also off to the sin bin, after Chiefs skipper Brad Weber successfully applied his captain’s challenge for Reece’s high tackle on replacement fullback Chase Tiatia. Eventually, O’Keeffe seemed to reach the right decision, though the advice from Pickerill upstairs was questionable.
Wanting a tip on where Reece’s first point of contact was – direct to the head or whether it started lower and slipped up – O’Keeffe was told by Pickerill it was direct, despite replays suggesting it indeed started more around the chest area.
This is key because for high tackles referees are instructed to follow World Rugby’s ‘Head Contact Process’, updated in March this year.
They are told to ask themselves if there was either a ‘high’ or ‘low’ degree of danger, with ‘high’ meeting the red-card threshold (before any mitigating factors can lower to a yellow card) and ‘low’ meeting a yellow card threshold (before any mitigation) or penalty kick.
‘Direct contact’ is one of the trigger words on a non-exhaustive list World Rugby provide for match officials to determine how much a player was at fault, and it falls under the ‘high’ degree of danger (red card) banner.
But despite Pickerill telling the on-field officials more than once that there was direct contact, O’Keeffe was prepared to stack up the rest of the evidence, and indeed under the new simplified ‘Head Contact Process’ it does allow refs more leeway on judgement calls.
O’Keeffe didn’t come up with specific mitigating factors (such as a sudden drop in body height by the ball carrier) to drop the sanction a level, however he did feel ‘‘the danger’s not extreme, because he’s flat-footed when he makes the tackle’’, so it seemed to meet more of the ‘low’ danger trigger words (such as ‘low force’) than ‘high’ ones.
And that meant the yellow card seemed the right call.